Timothy Smith had a bad day, and that's saying something if one looked at how bad his good days usually went. As a "professional bum", as he called himself, on a good day he got enough money by begging to buy a warm meal. On a bad day, like today, he would get stabbed.

Tim was rummaging through a garbage container, looking for some discarded clothes, but when he found none, he climbed out. A slip on the container's edge later, and Tim landed on a broken bottle, impaling his belly with shards of glass.

It would have been the end of Timothy Smith's life, were it not for a stroke of luck: crawling out of the alley, the homeless man collapsed on the filthy street. Filthy with blood of one Tadeus Floyd, who was hit by a car there a few hours ago. Tim didn't know that of course, and as his consciousness began to fade, he thought about how at least he would never be at another's mercy again.

He woke up an hour later. 'Welp, it's time for the judgement, huh?' he thought, but as he opened his eyes, he found he was still lying on the street. His belly was still stuffed with glass. No, wait, his belly was covered in glass, but it wasn't inside his body, instead forming a sort of protective shell.

"I lost so much blood I'm hallucinating."

HONK!

"Hey asshole, get off the fucking road!"

Tim was angry, unusally so. He was peacefully bleeding out on the side of the road, and that tool had the gall to tell him to find somewhere else to die? Tim was going to teach him some manners, and if that's the last thing he'd do, then so be it.

"Don't you talk to me like that, shithead! Can't you see I'm dying out here?!" he said, got up, and stared walking in the direction of the driver.

"Dying? You're walkin' fine, what are you on about?"

"I'll show you walkin fine, asshat!"

As Tim punched the driver through the car window, he watched as his fist dug into the angry man's skull. When Tim didn't feel the impact, he saw that his hand was covered in pavement, as if he was wearing gloves made of asphalt.

He realized he might not have been hallucinating after all.

Tadeus spent the rest of the day testing the limits of his healing. He started small, still cautious, but when he saw how a cut on his finger closed before his very eyes, even when he cut to the very bone, he grew bolder. He decided to stop only after cutting off his toe. When it didn't grow back immediately he started panicking, but when he held the severed toe to where it was supposed to be, it soon reattached itself, leaving no scars.

It was at that moment when the researcher realized how stupid and reckless his "experiments" were. He started questioning his sanity, when he felt the weird impulse from before. Now he understood what he yearned for: to use his newfound power. He felt the urge to influence the world, shape it with the tools that floyda concordis provided. He stopped doubting his sanity, for there now was no doubt he was no longer the same man he was before the accident.